


The Hope that keeps alive Despair

by handfuloftime



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:55:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23245870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handfuloftime/pseuds/handfuloftime
Summary: It's November of 1851, and Lady Franklin has a request for an old friend.
Comments: 20
Kudos: 21





	The Hope that keeps alive Despair

Jane had hoped to use the two hours on the train to make some progress on what she’s reading, but—inevitably—she finds herself thinking about letters instead. The pile on her desk, smaller every week, that need answering; the ones she has already sent, and now must wait to see whether they bear fruit. And that dreadful letter in the _Times_ , two days ago, though the response to that one will be more in Sophia’s line. She can feel time slipping through her fingers as she sits and tries to focus on a volume of Lady Stanhope’s memoirs. Six and a half years gone, now: hard not to feel that every second is more critical than the last. But a day not spent at the writing desk is a little thing beside that, she reminds herself, and the right conversation can do more good than a letter could.

It’s not nerves, this restlessness; that would be laughable. But she finds she has read the same paragraph three times without taking in a word of it. She sets the book aside and runs through her arguments again, point by point. Oh, for the days when she could visit friends without drawing up a battle plan beforehand.

Well, it can’t be helped. Jane brushes a stray thread from her skirts. The green dress is not quite her color, but she likes it less for its merits than for the contrast with her stepdaughter’s unrelieved black. _I will not wear a widow’s weeds_ , she’d told Eleanor last winter, when the first news had come. And Eleanor had accused her of caring more for theatrics than decency, and they’d argued, again.

Across from her, Sophia is nodding off over her needlepoint. Eventually she slips into real sleep, her head swaying in time with the train’s motion. The hoop slides from her fingers; Jane picks it up and sets it on the seat beside her, where the fabric won’t crumple.

“Have you been getting enough sleep, dear?” she asks later, after the call for Aylesbury has startled Sophia awake. There’s perhaps a little more color in her niece’s cheeks these days than there has been, but Jane doesn’t like seeing her still so wan and quiet.

“Yes, Auntie,” Sophia says, and gives her a brittle smile.

* * *

Aston Abbotts has hardly changed in the three years since Jane was there last. The very picture of a charming country house. The trees are taller, perhaps, and the children taller too. Lady Ross is her usual charming self, and if her husband’s smile is rarer now, his manners have lost none of their polish. 

“It’s good of you to come all this way to visit us,” Lady Ross says, pressing Jane’s hand. “I know how busy you must be.” 

“Not so busy that we’d forget our friends,” Jane says, and smiles even as she feels a sting of something that's almost guilt.

They have tea in the morning room. Grey November light filters through the windows, promising rain later, but the fire in the grate wards off the chill. The Rosses settle side-by-side on the sofa, close enough that their elbows brush. Jane takes a chair across from them; Sophia sits to her left, with a view of the whole room, including the somewhat moth-eaten penguin on the sideboard. The chair is less comfortable than it looked, but the tea is good, and Jane feels herself begin to relax.

She’s missed this: Ross’s last few letters have been short and awkward, too obviously shy of speaking of John or the search in more than the vaguest of terms. But now it’s almost like old times; with Sophia and Lady Ross here too, they could be back in that stuffy parlor in Blackheath in the spring of ’45, waiting for John to come through the door with Captain Crozier at his heels grousing about overdue supplies and the state of the steam engines.

But as their talk moves from the close of the Great Exhibition to Colonel Sabine and his observatories, the illusion begins to lose its comfort. Is it just Jane who feels the ghosts at the table, the shadow of the topics they’re avoiding? The conversation slows; Lady Ross catches her eye and gives her a sad smile, and Jane thinks no, perhaps not.

A pause, and she steels herself to speak. She hates to ask it in front of Lady Ross, but better to get it over with.

Sophia flicks a glance at her, so quickly that Jane almost misses it. Then, good girl, she sets down her teacup and says, “Ann, will you show me the gardens? I thought I spied a pond as we came in.”

It’s almost December; the gardens must be little more than sticks and the pond frozen over, but Lady Ross doesn’t point this out. “Shall we leave you two here?” she asks, putting a hand on her husband’s shoulder. “We shan’t be long.”

As they leave the room, Lady Ross takes Sophia’s arm and murmurs something that Jane doesn’t catch. Sophia laughs. Jane can’t help but smile: it’s so good to see her cheerful again, if only for an hour or two. 

The door closes on the sound of her laughter, and the silence that falls in its wake is all the more stifling. She expects that Ross will pick up the thread of the conversation, but he pours himself some more tea without a word.

Fine. There’s no point in putting it off any longer, and directness has always been the best approach with him, anyway. Jane sets her saucer aside, leans forward, and says, “I need you to go back.”

Ross says nothing.

“To find my husband and the rest of his men,” Jane says, as if that had not been perfectly clear.

Ross looks down at the cup in his hands. “I’d thought it would be that,” he says, eventually. Jane waits for him to say more, but he does not. His hands are trembling slightly, she notices: the teaspoon clinking against the china.

The silence stretches, somehow more oppressive than before. The clock in the corner chimes, and Jane feels a stab of something like frustration. 

“It’s been almost a year since you returned, Sir James,” she continues, carefully. “I know your last voyage was a difficult one—” she can’t keep her eyes from the grey in his hair, the lines creasing his face— “but we both recognize that time is of the essence. Now more than ever.”

Ross puts his cup down and folds his hands together. “Lady Jane, I’ve told you all I know. I know my views don’t accord with yours, but—”

And they’ve fallen into their old disagreements already. With an effort, Jane keeps her tone light as she cuts in: “You may be convinced there is no hope left. I am not.”

The memory feels like an old wound reopening: rushing to see him at the Admiralty in November of last year, just days after he’d returned. She’d barely recognized the man she’d met there: grey and bent, half shattered with the strain of clawing his ships free of the late autumn ice. And in his face, something that had stopped her heart.

 _Francis is dead_ , he’d told her haltingly, _and the ships abandoned_ , and he’d stumbled through a tale of Esquimaux and their stories of dying men and some strange creature. _And what of my husband?_ she’d asked, uncomprehending, and the lines in Ross’s face had deepened. _I don’t know_ , he’d admitted, _there were no other names, but—_ and it had been all she could do to stop herself from asking, _Then why did you come back?_

Jane looks down, trying to compose herself; it won’t do to show anger, not now. Instead she puts on her most practiced smile. “You returned with a handful of buttons and a second-hand tale from some Esquimaux that sounds more like a ghost story than truth.” She will not believe her John dead, not on such scanty evidence. “You saw no bodies, you found no records, nor even a trace of the ships. For all you know, that story could be pure fiction!” Ross tries to interject, but she hurries on. “And if Captain Crozier _was_ leading the group you heard of, surely my husband wasn’t with him. So where is he, and the others? If even a scrap of uncertainty remained concerning their fates, I would move heaven and earth to see it solved, and there’s nothing _but_ uncertainty here. There is too much left undone.” 

“There are a half dozen ships searching around King William Land as we speak,” Ross says. “Including my uncle, which at least spares us any more of his literary endeavors. And Dr. Rae intends to set out again overland next year. We’ll soon know more.”

“But they are not you.”

She had not meant to put it so baldly. Something changes in Ross’s face, a sudden and sharp unhappiness. “Dr. Rae is all very well,” Jane says in a rush, trying to cover it, “and I’m sure your uncle will do his utmost, if only to have the satisfaction of telling John ‘I told you so’ to his face, but you know more of the Arctic than any man living. I wouldn’t ask it of you—and still less of Lady Ross—if I thought anyone else could do what you can.”

Ross gives her a melancholy smile. “How much faith you have in me.”

“As always,” Jane says, and feels affection well up in her. She remembers him in Hobart: the handsome explorer, with magnetic eyes and a sprig of wattle in his buttonhole. The very image of a hero, he’d seemed to her then.

He sighs and shakes his head. The memory fades: all she sees is an old, tired man. “I’m sorry, Lady Jane,” he says, “but my answer hasn’t changed. My Arctic days are done.”

“You’ve said that before,” Jane observes.

Ross’s jaw tightens. “Don’t ask me to choose between my family and my friends,” he grates. “It wasn’t a decision I made lightly, last time, and I won’t do it again.”

Has she pushed too far? She has no sense of him anymore; she might as well be talking to a stranger. “I know,” she agrees hastily. “And history will remember your selflessness, yours and Ann’s both.”

She recollects herself, reassembles her arguments: here’s a theme she can work with. “Speaking of friendship,” she says, and sees Ross’s eyes sharpen. “I don’t need to remind you of how you helped my husband obtain the command. And how grateful John was for your support, at the time.” A pause, to let him consider that, and then: “Nor was he the only friend whom you helped. John was so delighted that you’d talked the Admiralty into appointing your dear faithful Crozier to go with him.”

That cuts. Ross gets to his feet and walks over to the windows without a word. His face, before he turns away, is all misery. Jane feels like a brute, but duty is an argument she knows intimately. _They went forth at your bidding_ , she’d written to the Admiralty, not that it had moved them an inch further.

But it’s another, older letter’s words that catch in her mind, as she watches Ross out of the corner of her eye. _I dread exceedingly the effect on my husband’s mind of being without honorable and immediate employment…_

She sees Ross’s shoulders slump, and she knows the burden that weighs on him.

“Lady Jane,” Ross says softly. He leans against the window frame; the grey light outlines him, washes the last of the color from his hair. Like frost has settled over him. “I know how dear this subject is to you. And you know I wanted nothing more than to see Francis and Sir John returned to us.” The words sound like they’re being dragged from him. “And how I… If I’d just…” 

He shakes his head, and then looks back at her. His eyes pierce her through. “They’re gone, Lady Jane. Dead and gone.”

Shocked, Jane speaks without thinking. “How can you—”

This will never do. She takes a sip of the bitter dregs of her tea and waits until she is sure of having her voice under control. The fire is dying down; the room grows dim. Against the rain-washed light from the windows, she can’t see Ross clearly. A small mercy. “I would have thought,” she says, at length, “that you, of all men, could appreciate that rumors of one’s death in the Arctic could be unfounded. That even one’s friends can think one dead, and yet you return years later, against all expectation—with a great scientific achievement, no less—”

She breaks off, clears her throat. The shadows cluster more thickly now; Ross steps away from the window and leans over one of the lamps to light it. His hair falls across his face, hiding it. He has to try three times before the match will catch.

“What I mean to say is,” Jane says, desperate, “I thought you would understand.” 

Ross sinks back onto the sofa and pushes his hair out of his eyes. “I do,” he says, very low. He does not look at her. “But I’ll tell you this: we shouldn’t have survived.” She feels ice seep through her. “Luck and God’s grace saw us through, when we hardly deserved it. Our friends may have been more deserving, but—” a bitter sound, not quite a laugh and not quite pain— “they weren’t lucky. There was no passage, for us or for them.”

For some reason it’s not John she thinks of then, but Crozier. The dashing hero’s quiet, awkward shadow, doomed to disappointment. 

And worse than disappointment. But she puts that thought aside: Ross may have the leisure to indulge his regrets, but she does not. “Luck has little to do with it now,” she says instead, perhaps more sharply than she ought. “What matters is the work.”

“Yes,” Ross agrees. She waits for more, but he leaves it at that.

Jane feels despair settle through her. “So,” she says, “You will not help me?” Far too plaintive, but any hope she’d had of maintaining her dignity lies in ruins. All at once she feels like she’s back before the Arctic Council, mustering every argument at her command to pierce John Barrow’s immovable confidence. Weariness washes over her like a tide coming in. Four years gone—Barrow’s in his grave, and nothing has changed. How much longer must she keep doing this? How many more times will she have to stand in front of some man who holds her husband’s life in his hands and lay her soul bare, while trying to keep her asking from slipping into begging? She is so _tired_ of asking.

“You will always have my help,” Ross says tiredly. “My advice, what influence I have left at the Admiralty… I want to know what happened, as much as you do.”

“I suppose that will have to be enough,” Jane says, and with an effort finds a smile. She knows what she should do next: persuade him into a more detailed promise, or at least turn the conversation back to happier subjects. That would be nice: two friends talking as they always have, with no silences or shadows between them. But the thought exhausts her.

Jane picks up her teacup again, out of habit, but it’s empty. Across from her, Ross reaches for the teapot; the tremor in his hands is clearer now, and she wonders if the rumors that he’s taken to drink are true after all. She looks away.

They sit in silence, the clock counting out the passing minutes, until Sophia and Lady Ross return.

* * *

On the way back to the station, Jane and Sophia talk of nothings: Lady Ross’s tablecloths, the gardens, how like her father little Annie looks. Only after they’ve settled themselves in their seats and Sophia has fetched out her needlework does she look at Jane and say, “Well?”

Jane shakes her head. “But no matter,” she says, trying for brightness. “There’s still plenty to be done. It’s high time we paid another call on the Dickenses. And I really must write back to dear Dr. McCormick. He sent me the most obliging letter last week, with his plan for searching the west coast of King William Land next summer.”

“Is he still trying to get the Admiralty to let him go in a fishing boat?” Sophia asks.

“Something like that.” McCormick would hardly be her first choice even without his whale-boat, but she’s in no position to turn down willing volunteers. “Well, we must work with what we’re given.”

Outside the window, rain is still falling and the last of the light has vanished. She thinks of John, somewhere out in the long polar night. How long since he’s seen the sun? As she turns away from the dreary landscape, she wishes her thoughts could bridge the miles: I am trying, my love—hold on just a little longer.

And she is trying. But she is so tired, and there is so little time.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from James Montgomery, “The Cast-away Ship”.
> 
> "I will not wear a widow's weeds" lifted from [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3rEO7u2h_w) version of "Lady Franklin's Lament". 
> 
> Three quotations from Jane Franklin’s letters: “I dread exceedingly…” is from an undated letter to James Ross, lobbying for John Franklin to be considered for the expedition’s command, “Your dear [&] faithful Crozier” is from a 12 November 1849 letter to James Ross, and “They went forth at your bidding” is from a 24 February 1854 letter to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, later published (without her approval) as a pamphlet. 
> 
> I’ve taken some liberties with the historical timeline, most obviously with having John Ross overwintering in the Arctic in 1851-2, rather than 1850-1. (Though in my defense the show started it by having James Ross still be in the Arctic in September 1850.)
> 
> I’m on tumblr @handfuloftime, come talk to me about sad Victorians and their dead friends!


End file.
